Whether shopping online, by delivery, or in-store, cannabis customers expect fast, easy, and safe experiences. These expectations can only be met with the right technology. Simplify the day-to-day, streamline operations, and support customer relationships with a dispensary management system that scales with your business. We’ll take a closer look at the features and tools that are necessary for your success.
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Inventory Management
Cannabis retail point-of-sale (POS) software is a specific retail management system that assists distributors and retailers of various cannabis products, such as flowers and edibles. This software facilitates critical processes associated with day-to-day operations for single or multi-location legal cannabis retail establishments. An accurate and up-to-date inventory list is necessary for any business, and cannabis is no exception. A correctly implemented inventory management system can help you reduce costs, meet regulatory compliance standards, and offer customers quick, safe, and convenient shopping experiences that reflect well on your brand.
For instance, if your store uses a First-in, First-out (FIFO) fulfillment strategy, you will always know which products were purchased and which are on their way out, which can help you boost profitability by selling the older stock before it expires. Conversely, last-in, first-out (LIFO) is a less popular inventory management method. It assumes the most recently acquired stock will be sold first, which can lead to product overstocking.
A fully-featured POS system also makes conducting weight-based inventory audits easy. The software automatically scans and inputs data, allowing the auditor to verify in-stock quantities per Stock Keeping Unit (SKU). Some cannabis dispensary POS systems even allow you to manage delivery services within the same platform. That means a single program handles your POS, inventory, delivery, and logistics needs, which makes it easier for your team to scale, stay compliant, and deliver on customer expectations.
Financial Reporting
A quality dispensary management software system will offer detailed financial reporting and analysis for various purposes. It’s a crucial tool to help you measure the effectiveness of your operations and create business plans for future growth. It also helps you track accounts receivable KPIs and calculate employee compensation. In the cannabis industry, financial reporting can help you comply with state regulations and make intelligent inventory, production, distribution, and more decisions. A robust cannabis management solution will be able to integrate with all aspects of your supply chain, from producers, growers, and manufacturers to dispensaries, labs, and extractors. This allows you to optimize your operations and boost efficiency across the entire supply chain to meet demand, stay competitive, and maximize profit margins. A dispensary management system is the backbone of any cannabis retail operation. A good cannabis POS should be easy for owners and budtenders, with features to help ensure compliance and connectivity to your state’s track-and-trace system. A POS should also include payment processing, CRM, customer loyalty programs, HR software, and ERP systems to provide a connected workflow for your cannabis business. Look for a POS with an open API or native built-in integrations so that you can easily integrate your other business tools.
Customer Relationship Management
Creating a seamless customer experience is crucial for attracting and keeping cannabis consumers. This is only possible with the right tools, including a dispensary POS system. The POS is the central hub of your cannabis retail technology stack and the most essential tool for optimizing customer interactions. Cannabis POS software handles transaction processing and includes check-in, inventory management, and features to help ensure compliance and connectivity with your state’s track-and-trace system. Your POS should support the inventory tracking methods that best suit your business model. Most dispensaries adopt First-in, First-out (FIFO) inventory management, which ensures that perishable products sell before their Certificate of Analysis expires. This helps boost profitability and eliminates costly stockouts. Alternatively, Last-in, First-out (LIFO) inventory management is an option. Still, it’s not ideal for a perishable product like cannabis and is usually incompatible with your state’s regulatory environment. Your POS should include built-in dispatch functionality for easy setup and optimization if you have a delivery service.
Analytics
Modern cannabis consumers are accustomed to fast, easy, and safe shopping experiences – like buying a cup of coffee or running into Target. This consumer demand for quality experiences requires specialized tools that allow retailers to stand out. The right dispensary management software will be able to provide the tools necessary to achieve this. These tools include a robust and intuitive POS system that allows staff to process sales data quickly without error. An intuitive and user-friendly POS also boosts the performance of your budtenders by providing on-demand product information to help them find exactly what a customer is looking for.
Additionally, the right dispensary POS will offer a secure, search-engine-optimized way to display your menu online. This will improve your website traffic, maintain ownership over your customer data and branding, and make it easier for customers to locate your business. Lastly, the best POS systems will be able to integrate with your state track and trace system and offer features that support compliance. For example, some states require that dispensaries report to them daily or weekly. These reports can be complicated to generate manually, especially for large dispensaries with a wide range of products. The top-rated dispensary POS systems will automatically generate these reports for you, making them easy to access.
